John Lott's Website

4/01/2006

Go Bruins!!!

UCLA takes an early commanding lead over LSU (20-10)!

UPDATE: Well, at least one of my teams won tonight! 59-45 and it wasn't ever remotely close. LSU never had a chance.

UPDATE2: I can't bring myself to put up a separate post following UCLA's loss to Florida. It was a very sorry performance, and I have to confess that I couldn't even get myself to watch the entire game.

George Mason v. Florida is turning out to be a great game

Watching this game right now. 18-17, Florida over GMU, but this is proving to be a tough fought contest. Given I went to school at UCLA and live right near to GMU, I have two obvious teams to route for.

UPDATE: Bummer, GMU just couldn't control those three point shots by Florida. Well, at least I still have UCLA to route for.

Canadians are not so happy about socialized medicine and crime

One would have thought that Canadians loved their socialized medical system. But the number one concern they apparently have is getting access to medical care. Canadians are also less then thrilled about their crime rates.

3/30/2006

Nebraska Passes Right to Carry Law, now only two states completely ban carrying handguns

By a 33-12 vote Nebraska senators today passed a concealed handgun law today. The governor has promised to sign the legislation. Only Wisconsin and Illinois completely ban carrying concealed handguns, and twice in the last few years the Wisconsin legislature has passed the law with veto proof margins in both legislative houses only to see one or a couple Democratic legislators switch their votes at the last minute. If Wisconsin Governor Doyle loses re-election or if there are only a couple of vote changes in the state assembly, the next time passage is tried the bill will become law.

One of the problems with the asymmetry in news coverage on guns

One of the problems with essentially only bad news with guns being reported (e.g., like the tragedy in Seattle over the weekend) is that it produces a call for more gun control laws. If the defensive gun uses got coverage or even better cases where people could no longer defend themselves since their guns had been taken away (see a few reported cases from New Orleans), it is possible that these debates would be quite different. In the Seattle case, (e.g., like the tragedy in the attack has created a call for more gun control.

3/28/2006

Interesting conference on the abortion and crime link

Today we just had an interesting conference on the abortion and crime link. There is a video of the event. We invited all the Americans who had finished work on this topic by the middle of February, so while it might appear that almost everyone who had finished a paper thought that the link between abortion and crime was nonexistent or possibly even positive. There was one paper that claimed to find evidence in favor of Donohue and Levitt, but that when the issues raised by Chris Foote were dealt with the significance of the effect went away. Video is available of the two sessions at the top right of the page.

There is broad public support for Prime Minister Stephen Harper to dismantle the former Liberal government's controversial national gun registry, shows a poll by SES Research/ Osprey Media. More than half of Ontario voters -- 55 per cent -- either strongly or somewhat support Harper's campaign promise to end the program intended in part to curb gun-related crime.

"It's pretty clear the public preference is to scrap the gun registry and for Stephen Harper to deliver on that promise," said Nik Nanos, president of SES Research. . . .

OTTAWA - The man the Liberals have assigned to assemble their blueprint for party renewal says the defeated government's national daycare program was "a deathbed repentance," the gun registry was "an administrative disaster" and the response to the sponsorship scandal was "bizarre."

The blunt-talking Tom Axworthy, a former aide to Pierre Trudeau who teaches at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., also says the former government's Kyoto policy was not only difficult to understand, "it wasn't real anyway."